Utterly Wrong, Hopeless and Surreal
by MyMadness
Summary: Even knowing it was utterly wrong and hopeless and surreal, he was held there by her obvious need for that simple bit of contact.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Takes place around the time of the series three episode, "Gently Evil." George is at the beach with Lisa Bacchus (John's wife) and Leigh Ann, Lisa's little girl. My thanks to dancesabove._

* * *

George and Lisa sat side by side at the shore, both dressed for the less-than-warm weather. He rubbed her back absently, his broad hand smoothing her spring coat.

It had been Lisa's sadness that had prompted this familiarity that he now seemed unable to stop. His touch had grown into something more since the quick hand he'd laid upon her back – since she had seemed to melt into him. He had whispered her name softly and tried to reassure her with the widening circles across her spine when she had discussed the need to end her marriage.

And even knowing it was utterly wrong and hopeless and unreal, he was held there by her obvious need for that simple bit of contact.

_How long had John shut her out? Avoided her?_ _Punished her?_ Gently wondered, with a mixture of anger and pity.

She let out a small laugh just then, surprising him and bringing his thoughts back to her alone. She stretched a bit. Smiled. And without warning, moved so that she was lying on her stomach on the old blanket. She brought her arms up to pillow her head.

He cast a quick look at her little girl, who was playing in the sand five yards off. But then he yielded to this young woman and what she seemed to need from him. He admitted to himself that it felt glorious to be what a woman _wanted_ again, even if only for this small space of time.

He reclined onto an elbow and placed his free hand at her shoulder blade.

"Oh, scratch. Just there. Would you, George?" she begged, guiltily.

He smiled to himself and eagerly complied.

"Enough?" he wondered after a while.

"I would never tell you that," Lisa admitted in a faraway voice.

"Nonetheless," he tutted.

"Of course." There was that weary sigh. Far too old for her young body. But then, she did have the non-stop care of this child, and those feelings of abandonment to manage. "Back on duty, am I?" she wondered as she started to push up.

It made him relent.

"No, no. Don't you stir. Leigh Ann's fine. I can watch her for a bit. Relax." And he meant only to place a chaste kiss to her hair. But his lips landed at her ear.

She failed to stifle her sleepy purr… and a coiled bit of him begged to be let loose in reply.

But he was on duty, so to speak. And was not the woman's husband.

He sat up and turned his attention to the child. But Lisa looked over for a moment then. Just long enough to find his hand. Her grasp in his was awkward, but she relaxed again. Finally finding that half-sleep that mothers manage. He kept her hand in his that hour.

/ / / /

Leigh Ann was sleeping in the back of Lisa's car, the one she had borrowed from her parents. The two adults were standing on the pavement in the early evening shadows outside Gently's flat.

"Thank you," she said. "For today."

"My pleasure."

"Everything is ever so much easier when I'm not trying to do it on my own."

"Shhh. Lisa. Don't act so beholden when I have had a wonderful time of it," he insisted.

She leaned forward and let her hands wind around his waist. Her head settled on his chest.

"Oh, girl," he breathed into her hair.

And when her kiss came shyly, he did not deny himself or her. He waited through it. Let it be the most blessedly full kiss it could be, before he whispered the truth of things. "We can't, Lisa. No more than that. It's pointless, and it would be wrong."

"I know. But I do tilt at windmills sometimes."

/ / / /

It was worse than kissing her, he thought; what he was doing now. Sitting at work that week, he could not keep from thinking about her. Her absent husband was there, a desk away, quite obviously considering him – without wanting to be caught considering him.

And knowing no way to stop, Gently carried on drawing windmills.

_...tbc..._


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: The second of what should be about 4 or 5 chapters. My thanks to dancesabove for the talented edits. In my mind, both George and Lisa needed a better deal. _**

* * *

There was a knock at the detective's flat come Saturday. Gently answered the unaccustomed intrusion distractedly, in his shirtsleeves.

"Lisa? Is anything... ?"

"Everything's fine," the young woman told him quickly. "I didn't mean to worry you. I was just feeling impulsive."

He smiled, relieved. "Just a case of not quite knowing what to do with yourself, I imagine, with Leigh Ann off at John's."

Lisa avoided his eyes then as she walked in. She put her purse down on a table and unbuttoned her coat, steeling herself to proceed without his explicit invitation.

Once the coat was laid across the back of his couch, she stepped toward him. Her arms were held open – but awkwardly so – communicating the guilt she felt at wanting to be in his arms again.

He would not say no to her or himself, not over what should be such a simple thing. But as he registered that first feel of her pressed to him, he forced himself to consider that _this_ might be something other than simple.

"Tell me what's wrong, Lisa," he said, as he began to rock her.

"Nothing. Everything. Just me needing you to hold me. I've been thinking about how good it felt..."

As had he. And shutting his eyes quite literally to what he knew, he kissed her forehead and then her cheek.

"Oh, Lord, this is a mistake, my girl." The words burst out of him, tensely.

"No one need get hurt," she insisted.

"No? I'm John's boss. I try to be his friend." George released her cautiously and stepped away. His hand pushed nervously through his hair as he started to pace.

"And he has already accused me of sleeping with you," Lisa told him flatly.

"I'm not surprised." Whether George meant that her estranged husband was only being a jealous sod, or showing some sort of premonition, Lisa didn't ask him to clarify.

"I know it wouldn't be forever, you and me," she told him, eyes down. "But it has been so long since someone has held me. Kissed me."

He found he was brought up short by what she'd said. "Oh, darling. _That_ I understand all too well."

"So, let me..."

The battle in him was obvious. He ended it with a snort of laughter, and that brilliant smile of his. "No. I really daren't."

But her steps toward him, slow as they were, were not stopping.

Her slim waist was under his fingers suddenly. The smell of her hair was upon him.

Want was easy, George Gently knew. And bare want of this young thing would have been something he would not have forgiven himself. But he allowed himself to hold her because he cared for her, too. So much.

… ... ...

Their kisses were making them quite heady. Their touches suddenly had a quality of naked desire to them. He braced himself away from her, his hand at her hip. And she knew why. She worked herself in closer, making him groan, making control that much more difficult.

"You want me, then?" she whispered.

He shook his head incredulously. "Dear God. Of course I do."

She broke off from him without explanation. He stood still in the middle of the flat, watching her as she opened her purse and retrieved something. With his eyes wider now, he let her press up against him. Let her push a condom into his trouser pocket without a word.

"Bed?" he asked quite hoarsely. "If you agree that is where this is headed?"

"Yes. Please." Somehow she had become a shade more timid.

… … ...

He sat on the edge of his mattress, with her standing in front of him. She used his shoulders for support and together they had her out of her blouse and skirt and stockings. All of it, the work of his hands and mouth, came at a measured and potent pace.

With her help, his shirt then found the floor.

Slowly he pulled her to be in the bed with him. Lisa closed her eyes as his hand smoothed from her shoulder to her thigh with a slowness that she found almost maddening.

"Let me..." he whispered as he felt the muscles tense beneath his touch. "Better now?" he wondered, as he explored across her with the firmness she seemed to crave. His lips rested against hers sensually while his fingers teased through the last of her clothing.

"And now?" he asked.

"Yes, George, yes."

Deep in her head, it played like a call and response. That back and forth that he had explained to her on their outing to a jazz club.

"More, Lisa?" he whispered.

"Yes, George, please."

He felt the buildup in her and matched her labored breathing, answered the rhythm of her hips with the firmness of his touch. Finally there was the reward of it, as he felt release take her.

"Oh, George. I can't believe..." she blurted out a short time later, her eyes wide now. She felt almost disoriented to realize that he had reduced her to putty despite the clothes they still had on. "I had no idea."

"Not the first time," he said, his voice worried and sad, "that you've felt that, certainly."

She blushed. "It's a common thing then? Having a man make that happen so easily?"

"Oh, dear. It certainly should be. Any night of the week at your age. Whether or not your man is up to his own."

"Will you be inside me? Please. Oh God, George. The things I feel."

He nodded and kissed her again and again. "My sweet girl," he told her. His practiced fingers removed the last of her clothing while he kissed her. "So beautiful," he assured her, once he had her completely naked in his bed.

She hummed in appreciation and pulled him toward her. He touched her and let his lips travel her skin while his mind reveled in how fervently she tugged at his trousers. Some limit reached in him, he rolled away from her to quickly shed what he was wearing. "Lisa," he murmured as he returned to pull her close again.

Once he was over her, something changed. She seemed to ready herself quite perfunctorily, and she stilled beneath him then.

"Don't tense up," George begged. "Oh, Lisa. We needn't rush. We needn't do this at all."

"It's just... it's been so long. It's easy to be as nervous as a virgin."

"I'm nervous, too. Truly."

She petted at his face and kissed him sweetly.

"What does a man have to be nervous about?" she tried to joke.

He answered her quite seriously. "You've put so much trust in me. I want quite badly to get this right. To _please_ you."

He kissed her, teased at her, making anticipation creep and rise through her. He knew her unease was gone when she dragged her fingers down his back with something like eager frustration.

"Tell me why you're waiting," she almost complained.

"I'm waiting for your smile," he whispered, a grin in his voice.

She managed a small laugh and the requested smile. "_Please_, George," she moaned then as she lifted against him.

...

After, he found himself sated, but feeling as if he had lost his bearings. He dipped his head, needing to avoid her eyes, her face.

"Are you all right, George?"

"Oh, yes, love. Very much all right," he tried to rally. He smiled for her, kissed her softly while he struggled with his breathing, if not his thoughts.

She knew. He couldn't hide from her. "I'm not trying to steal you away from anything," Lisa told him softly. And she meant, he knew, that she would not try to pull him away from the past.

"I know. I know."

But he had left all the same.

Later when he had moved to lie beside her and trace vague circles across her skin, he managed to tell her, "Thank you. For being you, Lisa."


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: My thanks to dancesabove and to anyone else who reads this lonely little story. The world needs more George. _

/ / / /

The next weekend Lisa came by with the car. Leigh Ann sat in the back, a shy distracted smile on her face. The girl gave George a wave at last.

It was nervous and awkward at first, with the small girl there as chaperone, especially given the memory of how they had been together the Saturday before.

Lisa drove them out of town, a choice (a precaution) they both knew was necessary, but neither would acknowledge it as so. The guilt was working at George as they sat parked outside the restaurant they'd chosen. But he made the conscious decision to push it away, for the sake of the day.

He squeezed Lisa's hand as it lay hidden there in the front seat. Then he launched into conversation. "Are you ready for a lovely lunch, Leigh Ann? Lots of spinach?" he asked, turning more fully in his seat.

The girl seem truly horrified. She shook her head and made a face. Lisa giggled in such a lovely manner, and George had to lean back to take in the look of her, happy and at ease now.

"He's only kidding, darling," Lisa assured her daughter.

"Truly, truly, Leigh Ann," George pledged with his hand over his heart. "Only kidding."

/ / / /

After their lunch they found a bit of a path Lisa knew, that wound through some woods. Lisa dared to push her arm through George's, and she leaned into him as Leigh Ann gamboled on ahead.

"It's like having a vicar stand over your bed," Lisa offered, nodding towards Leigh Ann.

George laughed, caught by surprise. "Not quite as bad as that. But bad, yes." They walked on a few more steps, he with his head down. And Lisa knew he was ruminating on just how to say something difficult to her.

So she beat him to it. She pulled his arm to stop him, and then after a quick look to make sure her daughter was facing away, she kissed him. "I don't regret it, George. I don't think you took advantage of me. I hope you don't think I've done _that _to you."

He seemed a little amused at the notion. But told her quite seriously, "No. I don't know _how_ I see this whole thing. But not like that. It isn't sordid, or at least we should not allow ourselves to think it is. But it has rather got away from us."

"It isn't a shameful, dirty thing," she mused, shaking her head. "Not to my mind, either. We neither of us belong to anyone else. We do care for and respect each other."

"Yes." He nodded, smiling in his tender way.

"And I needed to be loved," Lisa continued. "I mean, I know you don't _love_ me. But I needed to... be made love to, which is a different thing altogether from... well..."

"Just sex?" he whispered as he leaned a little closer.

"Yes."

She had blushed just faintly over that. The sight delighted him in some strange manner. It was amusing, he decided. She'd been wife and mother. Was now his lover. And she had colored, quite beautifully, at the word being spoken out loud. He chuckled, and she knew it was at her expense.

She swatted him – and more than once. Soon George yielded to a joyous impulse. He first pinned her arms to her sides out of something more than a need to defend himself; then he quickly wrapped his arms around her. He lifted her against his chest in a powerful move that made her gasp, and then he kissed her quickly.

He had her back on her feet before Leigh Ann had spun around to call out, "Mummy?!"

/ / / / / /

There was no shyness, no doubt when she appeared at his flat the following Saturday. They kissed with a week's worth of want and hunger before she had even removed her coat.

He pulled her onto the couch to sit astride him then, and he slowed the pace considerably. He had had a week to think on how he would make love to her. A week to decide to tantalize her slowly, here on the couch, before taking her to bed.

Lisa seemed a bit frustrated at how he touched her and how he _avoided_ touching her in earnest. She moved against him, wanting more and more contact. Finally, she whispered in his ear quite hoarsely to explain her desire to see things completed – _right now._ His grin was lopsided as he enforced a bit of distance between them.

"Don't do this, George. I can't take it," she moaned.

His hand worked the zip on her skirt in reply. "Then take this off," he suggested.

But she did more than that. She stood to step out of her skirt, but then did not rejoin him on the couch until she had removed every bit of her clothing. And in a fashion that had him aching and quite vocal about it.

She made him wait just the one beat longer than he thought he could, and then she rewarded them both by sliding into his lap. Her hands landed on his shirt and she began to work the plackets apart.

"Here?" he wondered, between kisses. Her hands had moved to open his trousers. And he then shed his braces in a move so frantic that it telegraphed his need quite shamelessly. And he didn't care. "Lisa?" he prompted the woman whose hand had found him out.

"Yes. Here," she confirmed as she stroked him harder. "And then later? Bed."

/ / / / / / /


	4. Chapter 4

_Thank you for reading! This is a last chapter on our dear detective. I had thought about prolonging this little story, but... Well, I simply feel better knowing that George has been sorted._

_Thanks dancesabove!_

/ / / / / / /

The weekends repeated themselves. There were their outings with Leigh Ann. And those Saturdays when Lisa was with him on her own.

"I feel an old fool," George told her when the arrangement had gone on for over a month. They had just woken from their nap. Their lovemaking, like the whole of their relationship, had become less desperate. But more ephemeral-feeling.

"No, you shouldn't think like that," she protested.

"But you need me less than you did."

She had rolled to be on her side, away from him, and she spoke to him over her shoulder. "I could say the same to you. How many times have you told me to find someone else?"

"And have you yet? Because you will," he insisted carefully.

"I want _you_ to find someone, George. Why don't you go out... go to the library, or..."

"That was what I told _you_ to do," he almost laughed, then gave up his inspection of the ceiling. Moving to lie behind her, he kissed her shoulder quickly in punctuation.

Lisa pulled his arm around her and rolled to face him better. "Go over to the campus and offer to teach something on public safety. Every girl falls for her teacher at least once."

"And what would I do with such an impossibly young woman?" he teased. He reached out to pinch her lightly.

His action broke the tension, but it did not restore them to the way they had been together in those early weeks. They both knew that had already leaked away.

Her hands and eyes searched his face. But no words would come just yet.

George broke the silence. "You've been good for me, Lisa. I'm sorry if I've held onto you too long."

She smiled sadly in reply. "I will tell you what I think. We can pretend it is one of those romances, something out of Hollywood. One of those stories where things end, but no one regrets having taken the chance to be together."

_But it hurts, doesn't it? _he wanted to say. Instead, he merely pushed at her hair and kissed her softly on the forehead.

"So, next weekend..." she started to say.

"I shan't expect you. And I shan't be here."

/ / / / /

When George asked at the station, he found there was a standing request for a lecture on personal safety at the university. The desk sergeant told him they usually just sent whichever sergeant was on the duty roster.

"I'll take the contact information, Taylor. I want to see what sort of job they think we've done."

The next day he took off his wedding ring and laid it on the dresser. He finished with his tie and headed for the door. He did that for three mornings before he finally made it out of his flat without retrieving the ring at the last moment.

And still it took some rousing to actually present himself at the university.

At campus to discuss what sort of classes might truly be best, he was painfully aware of every woman he spoke with.

Once home, he threw himself onto the couch with uncharacteristic doubt and self-pity. It suddenly seemed like a fool's errand that he had consented to four lectures. Lisa called that evening to check up on him, and he told her how ridiculous it all felt.

"Oh, I know. I've been to church with Leigh Ann, and I was nothing but tongue-tied when I spoke to men afterwards. I've been fixed up with a friend's cousin. I've even been out with a bloke I dated years ago before I took up with John."

...

Walking down the hallway of the university's main lecture building, George shifted the safety materials he'd brought from hand to hand distractedly.

He had met a great many women, he had to admit. And best of all, none of them were crime victims or witnesses. Lisa would most likely call to check up on him again, and he did want to sound hopeful.

He saw a woman about 40 years old approaching then, her head down as she read from the stack she was carrying. She was nicely dressed. Tall and trim. George smiled appreciatively without thinking about it. She was the type who seemed quite unaware of how pretty she was. And if he had a type...

More importantly at the moment, she was a moving target, weaving as she was. Quite unaware in _that_ respect as well, he mused.

"Miss," he called as he changed sides in an effort to avoid her.

"Ma'am?" he tried, with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. But she seemed to be unconsciously tracking his efforts to avoid her.

Finally, he stood flat against a wall and extended a hand as she lightly bumped into him.

Two students behind him snickered and passed them.

"I am sorry," George tried.

"No," she told him as she pulled her glasses from her head and put them back over her eyes, "It would appear I've backed you into the wall. So, you will have to let _me_ apologize."

"No harm done."

"Are you new on staff? I'd like to think I'd remember if I had run you over before."

"No. I'm with the police. Doing a few lectures for the students. DCI Gently," he said belatedly.

"Ah. I'm Susan Grant. History. Perhaps I will see you about?" She smiled a tad wickedly. "Or perhaps, I _won't_ see you, and I will merely run into you again."

It was his opening for something equally witty, but his mouth had gone quite dry. "Yes."

She started to continue on her way. Her smile tentative now. Something searching in her eyes. "You done teaching for the day? I could get you a coffee. Make up for running you down."

"Oh, no need. Really, no harm done."

"Right. Sorry. Again. Goodbye, Inspector." She stepped off smartly now.

"George," he called after her, a full and awkward five seconds later.

"Sorry," Susan said turning.

"My name is George," he said, stepping towards her and smiling at last. "And I'll be here next week as well. Same time. Could we do coffee then?"

"Lovely, George. I will see you then. Promise."


End file.
